We reenter this blogosphere to relate a few cute kid stories–I know!–and promise with a minimum of credibility to try and update more often.

Rhiannon (who is suddenly almost two and a half, running, jumping, climbing, and [maybe] [hopefully] potty-training) really, really loves her blanket. She calls it her geekie, and carries it almost everywhere with her. Fortunately, when she imprinted on the geekie, I had the presence of mind to cut it in half, so we have two geekies. Thank goodness.

It was a dark and stormy morning a couple of days ago, when we dropped the Husbandlet off at work. Right after he got out of the car, Rhiannon started crying frantically for her geekie. I looked back, didn’t see it, and figured we had probably forgotten it at home. How wrong I was.

When we got home, I looked all over the house for the geekie with an anxious little girl at my heels. I eventually broke out the emergency backup geekie. But it wasn’t until some time later that the awful truth hit me. The geekie must have fallen out when the Husbandlet was getting his bag out of the car.

I called the Husbandlet at work, and it was true. The Husbandlet braved the wind and rain to retrieve a rather battered geekie from underneath a car in the parking lot. He was also able to report that the geekie is extraordinarily absorbent.

* * *

in other geekie news, Rhiannon climbed out of her crib for the first time last night. (Her siblings were climbing out of cribs at 18 months.) When we checked on her before we went to bed, the Husbandlet noticed that 1) she was not in her crib, and 2) she was curled up on a blanket next to said crib, fast asleep.

When I asked her about it this morning, she said, “I climbed out of my bed and I snuggled up with my blanket and my geekie and I went to sleep.” I asked, “Why did you climb out of bed?” She said, “I crying. Geekie.”

From which we can interpret, the geekie fell out of her crib. Crying ensued. No parents appeared. So Rhiannon resorted to drastic measures. But her goal achieved, she did not engage in mischief. Instead, she put herself to sleep on the item most closely resembling her bed.

And that’s pretty much Rhiannon for you.

* * *

Liam has a stuffed penguin, Pengie. I think Pengie was originally a part of a gift to Ngaire, but Ngaire has never really been into stuffed animals, while Liam fell in love with Pengie right away and has been sleeping with it for the past year.

Today, Ngaire remembered the original gift distribution and decided that Pengie was really hers. She kept sneaking into Liam’s room and trying to appropriate the penguin. We had a bit of an Issue with Ngaire–with Liam a slightly anxious observer–over this.

While the Husbandlet and I were trying to deal with Ngaire’s Issues, Liam came into her room with Pengie. He handed it to her and said, “Here, Ngaire, you can have Pengie.”

He was much praised.

Later, I was talking to him about what a kind thing he had done, and he said, “Ngaire wanted Pengie, but I took him back in my room so he could say goodbye to Little Kitty [his other sleeping buddy] and I could give him one last hug. Then I gave him to Ngaire, because she loves him and I don’t need him anymore.”

There are moments when I’m really amazed by this little guy.

(Due to her general attitude and behavior, Ngaire didn’t get to keep Pengie tonight. But I’m very proud of my son, who wanted to make his sister happy.)

“I had a hard time stomaching this proposal. I couldn’t imagine a life where I was a breeder who had to give my children away to my land owners so they could eat them. I would cry and become depressed. My children are everything to me. They are my entertainment, joy, happiness, and sunshine.”

The Husbandlet is away on the Big Sea. So of course (well, actually for real of course) I decided now would be a good time to start Ngaire, Liam, and myself on an anti-candida diet.

We are eating meat (non-processed), eggs, veggies, brown rice and rice cakes, almonds, coconut products, olive oil, avocados and cucumbers, and gluten-free oatmeal. I’m going to give quinoa a shot. That’s really about it. It has to be about that restrictive for the first three weeks; then we have four weeks of slightly less restrictive (we can add back sour fruits and sweet potatoes), and then after that we get to start slowly re-introducing foods … though the recommendation is to stay gluten- and casein-free for another five to six months.

The kids are doing OK. Ngaire, in particular, asks for off-limits items fairly often, but she accepts calmly when I tell her no. Except for when I denied her cheese; then she stated quite calmly and forcefully her exact opinion of that aspect of the diet. I seem to recall that one of her first words was “cheese.” Liam is trying to get around things by subsisting mainly on rice cakes, and I’m probably giving him more than I should, but he’s also eating a far amount of meat (no eggs, yet) and significantly more veggies than previously.

Rhiannon isn’t technically on the diet. I’m still giving her milk, peanut butter, and a little bit of sugar on her coconut custard. However, and this will probably surprise no one, she has been eating my diet-friendly concoctions more happily than all the rest of us put together, and that includes the weird “cookies” I attempted last night.

For my part, I really really miss baking … almost more than I miss eating baked goods. Almost. I love baking, and it’s been one of my hobbies, de-stressers, and chores-that-I-enjoy for my entire tenure as a SAHM. I’ve been looking at gluten-free baking recipes, just to plan ahead, and I must say I find the prospect a tad depressing.

So, you will ask, have I yet seen any happy results of this experiment? Well, we’re only on day five, so it’s hard to say. Both Ngaire and Liam seem a LOT calmer. They’re not running around crazily quite so much, and Ngaire seems very happy and cuddly. Ngaire has been following directions more easily. Liam is almost worrying me. He isn’t making the living room into an obstacle course or climbing the walls anymore; in fact, he’s requesting a lot more TV than previously and then sitting down to watch an entire movie. I’m not sure what this all means. Is it good? Bad? A sign of an increased attention span? A normal part of switching over from a high-carb diet to one that involves protein and veg? A sign of starvation? He did have horrible growing pains in his legs on the second night of the diet, probably because he’s been getting all his calcium from rice milk, and I took him off that. I started giving him calcium supplements, though, and he hasn’t complained of his legs hurting again. (I’ve also been giving both kids D3, grapefruit seed extract, and B12.)

As for me, I used to feel queasy and anxious a lot of the time, and I don’t anymore. I’m not experiencing the sudden head-clearing some people talk about after a candida cleanse; but then I’m not 100% certain I have a candida problem.

Thoughts on Day 5 for the long-term? I’m super hoping to be able to reintroduce dairy and gluten (oh, please!), but I’m definitely planning to skew our diet more towards protein and good fats, and less toward carbs, after this.

In other news, I miss my Husbandlet! Last year, we were able to exchange emails pretty regularly and I even got a phone call on our anniversary, but this year there’s only one email-enabled computer on the ship, and I haven’t heard anything from him since he left last Wednesday. Here’s hoping he’s enjoying his glamorous outing and not getting too seasick.

My bedroom has one wall that is entirely mirrors. This leads me to frequent reflections (har!) on the effects certain activities of recent years have had on my body, which in turn leads me to question the Husbandlet as to whether it would be gratuitously vain to get a b*oob job.

Fortunately for me, the Husbandlet knows better than to answer this question.

Also fortunately for me, the Husbandlet grew up in Africa, where utility is the name of the game, in re: the b*oobies.

Me: “I mean, don’t you think these things are horribly saggy?”
The Husbandlet: “I don’t call that saggy. You’re not saggy until you can use one side to breastfeed the child on your back …”
Me: “While simultaneously using the other one to comfort …”
The Husbandlet: “The child walking by your side, yes.”

Ngaire got a rubber worm out of the prize bucket at school a few weeks back. I can’t find a lookalike on the Internet, but it looked kind of like a supersized gummy worm. It was fun and squiggly; the kids liked to play with it in the bath.

Last night, Ngaire asked to take her worm to bed with her. I tucked the two of them in.

An hour or so later, I heard a gagging sound and went in to check on her. Ngaire had swallowed her worm.

I repeat: SWALLOWED (as in, NOT CHEWED) her worm.

She was rather traumatized by this, not so much by the experience (though she did complain that she could still feel it in her throat) but by the fact that her worm was now gone. She kept saying, “I should never have taken it to bed with me!”

To which I could only reply, “No, you shouldn’t have put it in your mouth and SWALLOWED IT.”

Today, she complained of a tummyache, but otherwise she seems to have come through the devastation in one piece. One wonders whether the same will be said of the worm.

Tonight, she took a giant Dalmatian stuffed animal to bed. As we were tucking her in, I told her, “Now, Ngaire, whatever you do, do NOT swallow that Dalmatian.”